A COTTAGECORE DREAMHOUSE IN LOS ANGELES

Behind a storybook exterior, the designer and her husband Micah Blyckert are creating a home for their life and work.

SANCTUARIES LA EXPLORES THE QUIETER SIDE OF LOS ANGELES THROUGH DESIGN.

ROOTED IN THE BELIEF THAT SANCTUARY EXISTS EVERYWHERE, OFTEN HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT.

IF YOU ENJOY THIS PUBLICATION, CONSIDER SUBSCRIBING OR SHARING IT WITH A FRIEND.

---

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SHELBY NICO DIAMOND

Designer, musician, and Ceramicah co-founder Alex Cadiz at the Los Angeles home she shares with her husband, Micah Blyckert. After growing up across five countries, she’s finding peace in staying put and slowly making the house their own.

Alexandra “Alex” Cadiz grew up across five countries, became an architect, worked in interiors, makes music, and is continually building a lighting brand with her husband, Micah Blyckert. For a long time, she felt she had to decide which of those things defined her. At 33, she is making room for all of them. Ceramicah, the Los Angeles studio she and Micah founded, has given them both creative autonomy and the means to buy their first home. Now, that home is giving something back: new ideas, space to experiment, and an unexpected sense of peace.

I visited Alex at the Tudor-style house she and Micah moved into in October 2025, after nearly nine years in a beloved Spanish-style apartment. There are original details they want to hold onto, a banquette Micah built, their own lighting throughout, and a basement pub their friends are campaigning to keep. The previous owners left a note about the family who had lived there before them, the peach trees and jasmine, and their hope that someone would celebrate the house’s hundredth birthday in 2028. Alex and Micah are finding their place in a home that already holds other people’s lives.

The living room was one of the things that first drew Alex to the house: high ceilings, a generous window, and a fireplace. A little grandeur, with plenty of room to get comfortable.

Left: The fireplace anchors the living room, its little niche holding a ceramic pineapple collected in Mexico. Right: Window light falls across a chair pulled close to the hearth — a good place to spend an unhurried afternoon.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m Alex. I’m 33, and my husband and I own a design brand called Ceramicah that we’ve been building over the past six years. It’s completely changed our lives. It’s given us freedom, creative autonomy, and the resources to move into this chapter: buying our first house, creating a space that really feels like ours, and hopefully growing into the next chapter.

You also make music, and you work across architecture and share these various parts of yourself on social media. I find people who are so multifaceted really interesting, and it’s part of why I wanted to interview you.

Sometimes it’s hard for me to introduce myself because I think about how people view me and what they know me for, versus how I feel inside. I am a multifaceted person. There are so many layers to me and my creativity; I’ve never been just one thing.

It’s taken me a long time to feel comfortable embodying the full spectrum of who I am and what I do. That’s why my age feels important. At 33, I finally feel secure enough in myself and my life to do all the things I love and share them, without worrying that one will dilute the other or confuse people.

This is me. This is what I like, this is what I do, and these are all the things I encompass. What motivates me is showing other women that they can do that too.

I really relate. I also went through that journey of feeling I had to pick a lane and define myself. The more people do all the things that interest them, the more it gives other people permission to do the same.

One hundred percent.

A Chrome Tera Sconce hangs beside a painting by Roger San Miguel, while a Cuadra Floor Lamp sits next to a chair handbuilt by Micah.